Alumni facilitating economic development in emerging economies

By Doug McInnis

Kristin O’Planick, MBA ’10:

Making the Most of Tourism

Foreign investment is supposed to spur local economies and create
jobs. Sometimes it does neither. In Egypt, for example, European
companies built numerous tourist hotels, and then staffed them
with non-Egyptian workers. As a result, 90 percent of all tourist
dollars spent at some resorts ended up in Europe, says Kristin
O’Planick, who works for the United States Agency for International
Development as an enterprise development specialist.

Kristen O’Planick, MBA ’10, in a work "victory" photo with a water truck that she
and her team procured for a village along the southern Red Sea that didn’t have
access to potable water. "The procurement was a long and painful process,"
she says, "so when the truck finally cleared customs I had to have a celebratory
photo with it!"

O’Planick witnessed the problem in her previous job as a USAID
contractor in Egypt. At first glance, foreign-owned tourist ventures
reaped a bonanza. “They could say, ‘Look how many tourists we’re
bringing to the country,’” says O’Planick. “But if you looked at
capital flows, much of the money flowed to other countries.” In
some cases, Egypt reaped little more than environmental degradation.
“Egypt still has pockets that are undeveloped,” she adds. “And
they are definitely looking to do future development differently.”

During her stint in Egypt, O’Planick supported the development
of locally owned ventures that would attract tourist spending. They
included restaurants that featured indigenous food, day trips on
camel back, and handcrafting businesses such as jewelry, wall hangings,
rugs, and leather goods. Woman ran many of these ventures
to supplement meager family incomes. While these businesses were
tiny, the impact was often large. “Some of the women tripled their
family’s income,” she says.

O’Planick gravitated to economic development after her Peace
Corps service in the West African nation of Guinea. “I got addicted
to the idea of doing work that is meaningful,” she says. She
admits that the road to progress is steep. “In some places, it seems
overwhelming,” she says. She focuses on those things that can be
changed. “In Egypt, we wanted to leverage foreign investment to
benefit the local economy as much as possible,” she says. “Our goal
was to change the system.”

"Egypt still has pockets
that are undeveloped.
And they are definitely
looking to do future
development differently."

A picture from the camel market outside of Cairo — a very traditional place in
what can be a very modern city.